Have you wondered how Facebook attracts and retains growing population of mobile technology start-ups?
FbStart is start-up corporate accelerator of Facebook levaraging development and growth of early stage start-ups working on mobile applications.
Facebook together with partners such as Adobe, Salesforce, MailChimp, Hootsuite, or UserTesting offers package of tools, services, mentorship, and community opportunities designed to grow mobile applications.
FbStart particularly looks for mobile developers that intend to launch their applications and are associated with venture capital firms, start-up accelerators, and start-up incubators partnering with FbStart. FbStart is also open for applications from developers with experienced with launching applications in Apple and Google Play application stores.
Majority of benefits related to support of FbStart lasts up to one year, however start-ups being enrolled to the program for more than one year can still count on mentorship and community opportunities related to access to portals, forums, meet-ups and events.
FbStart also creates opportunity for any organization that would like to become a partner in investing and developing mobile-applications-oriented start-ups.
FbStart boosts position of Facebook as two-sided market platform, and strengthens its position of “dominant design”, which will distinguish it among other social medial platforms, and also possibly attract and retain its users. Initiative is also incredibly interesting from the point of view of further growth of Facebook, especially in already highly saturated markets. One of the business strategies for growth in such markets is “long tail” strategy resulting in delivering personalized and customized content looked up by diversified groups of targeted customers, which start-ups joining FbStart can contribute to.
FbStart became popular worldwide thanks to its FbStart Apps of the Year Awards, which recognizes the most successful applications among the program members. Start-ups applying for the award are assessed according to the following criteria: growth and engagement, experience and design, efficiency at scale, and leveraging Facebook platform.
Awards of the FbStart Apps of the Year Awards total up to USD 150 000.
The last winner of FbStart Apps of the Year Awards is RadPad, start-up from Los Angeles, US, affiliated with one of my favorite US start-up accelerators – Amplify.
Los Angeles by the way recently develops forms of start-ups support ecosystem, which are extremely intriguing to observe and explore. In addition to Amplify, which belongs to top start-up accelerators in US alongside with Y Combinator, 500 Startups and Techstars, Los Angeles leads Teen Startup Academy – a 7-weeks teenager’s oriented start-up acceleration program, where teenagers after school classes learn to develop and scale-up their business ideas.
Teen Startup Academy is led by professional instructors and sharpens skillset of nascent entrepreneurs with curriculum encompassing basics of programming, designing, pitching, and other aspects of creating and leading a new venture.
Local entrepreneurship ecosystems such as in Los Angeles maximize entrepreneurship potential of big spectrum of local community.
In that context awarding FbStart Apps of the Year Awards to start-up from Los Angeles is not a surprise.
Dzida!